ClipTools: The New Clip Manager Window

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to use the new Clip Manager Window in my ClipTools app. 

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So ClipTools is a  powerful Clipboard Manager that I created. It's completely free and you can get it in the Mac App Store. To read more about it go to MacMost.com/ClipTools. There is comprehensive documentation with all the different things it can do. Now a new feature in Version 1.4 is something called the Clip Manager Window. This is a really powerful new feature. Previously, to use Clip Manager you pretty much completely used it in the Menu Bar. So you clicked on it here in the Menu Bar and then you selected a previous clip, something that you copied, and then pasted it in to whatever it is you were working on. New clips come and are limited and are kept just like all Clipboard managers. But you could also hold the Option Key down and Save a clip so it remains there permanently. You also have something called SmartClips that allow you to have clips that have special functions in them. But you usually access these in the Menu Bar here. But now there is a whole new feature that allows you to access these in a completely different way and you can do all sorts of different things with it like edit the clips themselves. 

So if you go all the way down to the bottom here you'll see Clip Manager. Now instead of accessing it here in the Menu the power user way to do it is to go into Settings and then choose one of the Global Keyboard Shortcuts. I'm going to set this one to Shift Command C. Then I'm going to set the Action to be Bring up the Clip Manager. So now instead of having to go to ClipTools here in the Menu Bar and select Clip Manager you can simply use Shift Command C and it brings it up. Let's give it a try. I'm going to use Shift Command C and it brings it up. Here's the ClipTools Clip Manager.

Basically it is two parts. You can see a list of all your clips on the left and then when you select a clip you can see its contents here on the right. You can switch between clips, save clips, don't have any right now, and your SmartClips. You can also resize this window. So let me bring it over here and resize it to give myself some more room. Now you can rearrange the clips by simply dragging and dropping. So I can drag this clip up or this clip down. You can also, with the selected clip, bring it to the top or bring it to the bottom. You can easily Delete a clip with the Minus button here.

Now you can use the Clip Manager as an alternative to the Menu. So, for instance, if I wanted to Paste something in here I can bring it up and then I can select the clip there and use Paste & Close and it will paste it in. So it makes it real easy to select things and have a little bit more room to actually see what is there. You can also double click on one of these and it will work. 

Notice when I bring up ClipTools there is some information underneath here. It tells you which app was the active app when this was copied. It tells you what type of clip it is. In this case Rich Text and you can see here it says Plain Text. Then it says the number of characters. When you hover over Paste & Close it tells you exactly which app it is going to paste in. But not only that, you can Edit. So I can click in here and I could add something to this and I actually edited the clip. If I close this window and then look in the Menu here you can see that it has actually been changed. So you can edit plain text clips. Adding something, removing something, editing something. You can also do it for Rich Text as well. So I can edit this one here, like that. You can even style it. So I can select something and if I right click, two-finger click, or Control Click on it then you see I have Font controls here. I can Bold something or I can just bring up Show Fonts and actually change it using that. 

So this means you can copy some text and if it is not exactly what you want to paste somewhere else you can go into the Clip Manager, Edit it a little bit before you paste it. 

Now there are other things you can do as well. Under Actions here there are a variety of things depending upon the type of clip you've selected. So, for instance, instead of pasting and closing you could simply copy and make this the thing that is in the actual keyboard. Then you can use Command V to Paste it somewhere. You can also Paste without closing the window. You can Copy Plain Text because this is Rich Text. So if you wanted to copy this as Plain Text to strip out all of the styling you could. You can also Paste Plain text as well. 

You can also add this to saved clips. So I could just choose this and now if I go to Save Clips you can see that this is an item here. I can choose this one here and add this to Saved Clips as well. You can see these are now under Saved Clips. You could also add to Smart Clips. If you wanted to start with something you copied as a Smart Clip and you can set the Hide Flag. So sometimes I know people want to Hide a clip because maybe it is a password or something like that and there are ways to set that up automatically depending upon which app you're copying from. But you could also manually do that in the Menu Bar and you could do it here in Clip Manager as well. So I can Hide this one and you can see it doesn't appear here. If I Close this window and look in here you can see it is hidden right there. Just like before. It's not new functionality. Just an extra thing you can do in Clip Manager as well as the menu. I can select this and Unhide it. 

Now when you go to Smart Clips you can see all your Smart Clips here and it is a much easier way to edit them than using the little mini window that normally comes up for you to Add or Edit Smart Clips. So you can see here I've got just a simple Smart Clip and if I use Paste & Close it will actually prompt me for things and perform all of the Smart Clips functions just like you were choosing it from the Menu Bar. You can also go into Actions here and copy the result. You can Paste the result without closing the window and you copy the source without actually executing the function. There is also a handy link to the Smart Clips Help Page so you can remember what all these functions are. 

Another really powerful thing you can do using the Clip Manager is  to set a shortcut for any Smart Clip. So you can only have two Global shortcuts in Settings. But now you can have as many as you want for Smart Clips. So, for instance, I'm going to set this Smart Clip here to Command F1. So I'll do Set Shortcut and Command F1. You can see it set it there. If I click it again it would erase it and I'd have to set it again. Now I can Close the window there. I'm not even using ClipTools. I can use Command F1 and it will execute the Smart Clip. Remember you don't need to have a function in a Smart Clip. A Smart Clip can just be plain text. So if you have some very important things that you're always pasting in somewhere you can just put them in as a Smart Clip and then assign a keyboard shortcut like this. 

If you really like just using the keyboard you can use ClipTools to paste something just with the keyboard. So I'm going to use the Global Keyboard Shortcut I set, Shift Command C. I'm going to use the arrow keys to select something and that Paste & Close button, I can activate it with the Enter Key. Now, of course, you would need an extended keyboard with a numeric keypad to have an Enter Key. But on any keyboard you can use the fn and Return to simulate the Enter Key. 

Here's another tip. If you go into the Menu here and then you go down to Clip Manager, but before selecting it hold the Option Key down. You can see the Menu changes to Floating Clip Manager. It's the same window but now it will always stay in front. So you won't lose it behind other windows. When opening and closing it I tried to make it work as intelligently as possible. So use the Keyboard Shortcut you set to open it. If you use the Keyboard Shortcut again it closes it. But if you Open it and then you bring another window on top of it, if you use that keyboard shortcut it is smart enough to recognize it is not on top and it brings it on top and now use it again and it will close it. Also, if you bring it up, no matter how you bring it up, you can use Command W to close the window. When you do bring up the Clip Manager note that you don't have to click here to select things. I've enabled Command 1, Command 2, Command 3 to be able to jump to the three sections. 

Oh, and one more feature. Notice there is a Plus button here. Under clips it doesn't make sense to have the Plus button. Those are for things you have copied. But under Saved Clips and Smart Clips the Plus button is active. So if you just wanted to go to Saved Clips here and just create something new you don't have to type it in another app. You can use the Plus button. It is going to create a new clip. It will be plain text. But you can type whatever you want here and then to Save Clip you can do the same thing as Smart Clips. If you really want Rich Text you can just go down here and convert it to Rich Text and now you can use the Context Menu to style it. You can even click on a link inside of Rich Text like this and it will open it up in the Browser. Or you can select something and Control Click, right click, or two-finger click and access all the standard functions like looking up a definition, translating, doing a Goggle search, all sorts of different things you would normally would expect in any regular text editing situation. If you wanted to actually select something and make it another clip just Copy it. Command C and you can see it copied it and there it is. 

One last tip. Remember I said you could use Actions here and then you could Paste and it would keep the window open. Whereas if you click this button here then it will Close the window. Well you can also hold the Command Key down and click this button and you can see it Pastes in. It has to switch to that app but the Clip Manager remains open so you can continue to use it for other things like pasting this.

So yes this is a really big step forward for ClipTools. It makes it so much more powerful. I'm already using the Clip Manager as much as I'm using the Menu just by itself. In particular I love being able to Copy something but if it is not exactly what I want, being able to go in and edit it and then paste it having already made the changes before I paste. So I hope you find it useful. Thanks for watching.